Always
by Saint H
Summary: Robin doesn't fight, doesn't work tirelessly because he wants to be stronger. He wants to keep from being weaker. Why? Starfire doesn't know, but she doesn't like what it's done to Robin. Oneshot.


Alone.

A young body, with straining muscles and budging veins.

The only thing showing besides profusely sweating naked skin was a pair of black gym shorts, a mess of limp, sweat-soaked black hair, and a pseudo-mystic, identity concealing eyemask.

Robin was doing pushups in the gym.

The concept of time lost in the stillness of deep night and primordial morning. An hour stretching out between the last vestiges of sunlight and the dawn could be held out by simple force of will and imagination.

He had the doors to the gym shut tight, the PA playing his music loud enough for his tastes, not loud enough to wake the others.

He had been training for hours, before sunset, and hadn't stopped yet. As Robin bent his arms bringing his face a millimeter from the floor a steady stream of sweat added to what was quickly becoming a pool beneath him.

How many hundreds of pushups? Thousands of sit ups? How many miles run? Pull ups pulled? Countless routines of innumerable martial art styles practiced how many times?

It all blurred past a certain point, but the Boy Wonder kept going.

It was the only way, not to get stronger, but to keep himself from getting weaker.

Beneath the eyemask.

His muscles finally decided he had done enough and his body physically shut itself down as he collapsed with a deafening thud into a reeking pool of his own sweat.

It didn't hurt, he had long since become absolutely numb.

And as Robin lay there, waiting for his body to recover enough to actually move so he could shower and gain an hour or two of sleep before the day started, he thought.

_'Sometimes I think this eyemask is all that holds me together. God, so weak. Just can't get any weaker or I'll fall apart.'_

Inside Robin's chest, and little pain started to fester.

And he winced.

In all the well tuned organs running on hyper, in all the masses of numb muscle, there was a pain. A pain, not of his physical body.

A cold, painful emptiness. A hollowness shadowing his heart… his soul.

Robin winced… and the tears came as the PA switched to _Mama_ by _Godsmack_.

And his mind raced, fueled by the hollow pain, images of horror, of loneliness, of cold, cold existence that could no longer be warmed by the heat of his working body.

_FLASH!_

"_Mama, I have a bad feeling about tonight."_ _Dick said as he and his parents suited up for the night's show._

_His mother kneeled down to her son's face and smiled, "Don't worry Dick, honey. I'll always be there for you. You know that, always."_

Robin flashed back to his current state, wanting to writhe in ethereal pain, but unable to. In compensation he began to moan. A deep, animal noise from the deep corners of his most primitive being. A deep, wounded, pathetic cry, a desperate plead for help and knowing no one will be there to help. No one would be there for him.

No one.

And the cold emptiness came.

So cold, so cold. So hollow.

So alone….

So cold, so very, very cold.

_FLASH!_

_A rush of wind as Dick landed on the elevated platform._

_Beside his Mom._

_The crowd awed, and the applause were thunderous. They nearly shook the entire bigtop. The rest of the circus below him looked up appreciatively._

_He smiled, he had been wrong, nothing was going to happen tonight._

_From across the great expanse of the empty air the mother and son saw the father._

_He nodded with a pleased look._

_The mother nodded back, she knelt down beside Dick, and kissed him._

_It would be the last moment they ever shared together._

_A white flash, and then a snapping of partially cut ropes._

_The unanimous gasp from the crowd seemed to draw all the air straight out of Dick's lungs as his parents flailing forms splattered bloodily across the floor of the big top with a sickening sound that was the bastard child of a 'thud' a 'squish' and a 'crack'._

_FLASH!_

"AH!" Robin yelped pitifully, rolling over on his side, he wretched. He spilt his guts out across the floor of the gym.

"ROBIN!" came the shrill cry of feminine voice.

Robin's mind reeled. _'Who? Who…'_

A pair of warm, strong arms wrapped about his torso, and the frigid hollowness in his soul lessened.

He looked up thru his eyemask at the person who was know carrying him thru the tower, a pair of significantly worried green eyes, a crimson flowing of a graceful, fiery mane. Bronze skin that seemed to glow from an internal source.

He smiled at his pajama clad savior, "Starfire." He whispered weakly.

"Shhh." She whispered soothingly as she opened the door to his room and then to his personal bathroom.

"Do not worry Robin, Oh. I do not know why you insist on working yourself so hard. It is not healthy. It is not safe for your precious self." Starfire wanted to cry, to break down.

But she couldn't, she wouldn't, she needed to be strong.

Because at the moment, the strongest man she knew was weakened and envenomed by some mysterious force from inside.

She set him down in the tub and, leaving his shorts on, turned on the shower.

"St-Starfire." He mumbled again. He slowly reached up a shaking, stuttering, exhausted beyond human limits arm to his face.

"No! Robin do not."

His palm fell to his face, and then slid down, bringing the eyemask with it.

Dick turned blue eyes on Starfire.

And his face winced in tortured pain.

Starfire didn't think as she leaned into the hot water of the shower and took hold of the broken boy in front of her.

"Robin." She whispered.

"D-Dick." He whispered back.

"What?"

"My-My name. It's Dick."

"Dick, Please, do not worry. I will be there for you always. You know this, always."

Dick leaned his heavy head back and gave her a look, he smile a look of golden bliss as his hollow soul was filled with sublime warmth.

Then... he cried

He cried and threw his face in Starfire's bronze shoulder as she hugged him and stroked his black hair.

And he cried, and cried.

Taking in the smell of her crimson hair, he fell asleep... no longer weak.


End file.
